"Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar
Ashadu an la Ilah ila Allah
Ashadu an Mohammed rasul Allah
Haya ala as-sala
Haya ala as-sala"
The afternoon call to prayer echoes from the minarets of Istanbul's countless mosques. As on previous visits to Egypt and Morocco, I find it an unforgettable, visceral, heart-wrenchingly evocative soundtrack to the Middle East. Yet it seems the locals don't share my reverence. I'm sitting in a bar in a quaint covered alleyway just off Istanbul's main shopping street, Istiklal Caddesi, drinking a pint of Efes Pilsner, and watching the Turks getting tipsy. On the table to my right, a pair of raucous middle-aged Turkish men whoop and holler as their friend attempts to throw peanuts across the room into a pint. (Why is this funny? I have no idea. It just is. It's hilarious. It's like building giant snakes out of empty pint glasses at the cricket - brilliant!) Behind them, oblivious, another customer intently studies what seems to be Turkey's answer to The Racing Post, looking up occasionally to chart the progress of his fillies on a plasma screen showing live racing from who-knows-where. A couple of the waiters break off from their serving duties to glance at the other plasma screen, where a 24 hour Turkish News station offers confirmation that the country has a new President: the "Islamist" former Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.
To say Istanbul is a little confusing is an understatement. Am I in Europe? Am I in the Middle East? I'm in neither. Or both. I'm not sure. It's about as cliched as can be to say that Turkey, and in particular Istanbul, is at the crossroads of East and West, yet it's so overwhelmingly true that it's difficult to resist stating the obvious.
I woke with a start as the bus from Sabiha Grokcen Airport turned onto a bridge, O2 choosing that exact moment to inform me via text message that I could call home by adding "+44" to my numbers. Safe in the knowledge that I could now go ahead and quickly accumulate a phone bill roughly equivalent to the GDP of Chad, I turned to contemplate the staggering views. We were crossing the Bosphorus, the mighty stretch of water that separates western Istanbul from eastern Istanbul, Thrace from Anatolia, Europe from Asia, Occident from Orient. Yet both sides of this channel are Turkey, both sides are Istanbul. I can't think of many other cities in the world that physically straddle two continents - perhaps the cities on the banks of the two great Canals, Panama and Suez - there surely can't be any city in the world that metaphorically straddles two cultures like Istanbul.
At first glance, it's as European as Amsterdam, Paris or Berlin. Impeccably well-dressed men stroll hand in hand with their scantily-clad girlfriends down wide, tree-lined boulevards, stopping to sip lattes in roadside cafes. Shoppers throng the streets, clutching bags from Benetton, Nike, or Body Shop and stopping to refuel at KFC, McDonalds, or the ubiquitous Starbucks. Distant skyscrapers loom over the financial district, as important-looking suits hurry from meeting to meeting in their chauffeur-driven BMWs and Mercedes. Yet the shining glass and steel towers do not quite have the skyline to themselves. Hundreds of identical minarets and domes, the telltale characteristics of innumerable mosques, leap skyward out of Istanbul's lowrise suburbs, and, five times a day, intone their haunting invocation to prayer.
In truth, I expected a little more of "the Orient" and a little less of the European. The Grand Bazaar, loftily described by Lonely Planet as "mindblowing", "labyrinthine" and "medieval" seemed more Bluewater than Byzantium to me. Endless glass-fronted shops selling international designer goods strike an incongruous note among the seemingly anachronistic carpet sellers and hookah-vendors; even the usual slick sales pitch appears to have been toned down here - I didn't once hear the immortal "good price for you my friend!". Perhaps last year's days spent wandering the great Khan-al-Khalili Souq in Cairo have inured me to the charms of other, lesser Oriental markets, or perhaps I'm being pedantic or idealistic in finding the presence of Armani and Calvin Klein a little more boutique than bazaar, but I was slightly disappointed.
Yet Istanbul's other main sights have not disappointed, despite the indescribably large crowds of fellow tourists I meet everywhere. The Topkapi Palace contains opulent riches to match anything in the world, my own personal favourites being the gold and jewel-encased arm and skull of (allegedly) John The Baptist, and an eighty-six (I repeat, eighty-six) carat diamond found in a rubbish heap in the 16th Century, before being sold for the princely sum of three spoons. I wonder what David Dickenson would make of that. The Blue Mosque is like a fairytale of the Orient, what every mosque should look like, while the Aya Sofia, to my mind not as aesthetically appealing as its azure neighbour, more than makes up for any worn around the edges feel with its long and incredible history. From 527AD until the Ottoman Conquest of what was then Constantinople, the Aya Sofia was undisputedly the finest Church in Christendom. The Sultans, not wishing to let religion get in the way of architectural splendour, promptly covered the Christian images, tacked on a couple of minarets, and converted it to a Mosque. When Turkey underwent its most recent religious conversion, from Islam to secularism, under Ataturk in the 1930s, the edifice was declared a museum. Today the features of the two religions are intertwined in the decoration of the building: crescents and Arabic inscriptions sitting side-by-side with crosses and craven images of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
If the Aya Sofia is a fitting summary of Istanbul's religious schizophrenia, events outside the building on the day of my visit neatly emphasise the contrast between modernity and antiquity. A cobalt blue BMW M3 is being towed away for parking illegally, in an area designated solely for horse drawn carts. The screech of the alarm drowns out the muezzins' haunting cries from the minarets. No-one seems to notice.
Ashadu an la Ilah ila Allah
Ashadu an Mohammed rasul Allah
Haya ala as-sala
Haya ala as-sala"
The afternoon call to prayer echoes from the minarets of Istanbul's countless mosques. As on previous visits to Egypt and Morocco, I find it an unforgettable, visceral, heart-wrenchingly evocative soundtrack to the Middle East. Yet it seems the locals don't share my reverence. I'm sitting in a bar in a quaint covered alleyway just off Istanbul's main shopping street, Istiklal Caddesi, drinking a pint of Efes Pilsner, and watching the Turks getting tipsy. On the table to my right, a pair of raucous middle-aged Turkish men whoop and holler as their friend attempts to throw peanuts across the room into a pint. (Why is this funny? I have no idea. It just is. It's hilarious. It's like building giant snakes out of empty pint glasses at the cricket - brilliant!) Behind them, oblivious, another customer intently studies what seems to be Turkey's answer to The Racing Post, looking up occasionally to chart the progress of his fillies on a plasma screen showing live racing from who-knows-where. A couple of the waiters break off from their serving duties to glance at the other plasma screen, where a 24 hour Turkish News station offers confirmation that the country has a new President: the "Islamist" former Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.
To say Istanbul is a little confusing is an understatement. Am I in Europe? Am I in the Middle East? I'm in neither. Or both. I'm not sure. It's about as cliched as can be to say that Turkey, and in particular Istanbul, is at the crossroads of East and West, yet it's so overwhelmingly true that it's difficult to resist stating the obvious.
I woke with a start as the bus from Sabiha Grokcen Airport turned onto a bridge, O2 choosing that exact moment to inform me via text message that I could call home by adding "+44" to my numbers. Safe in the knowledge that I could now go ahead and quickly accumulate a phone bill roughly equivalent to the GDP of Chad, I turned to contemplate the staggering views. We were crossing the Bosphorus, the mighty stretch of water that separates western Istanbul from eastern Istanbul, Thrace from Anatolia, Europe from Asia, Occident from Orient. Yet both sides of this channel are Turkey, both sides are Istanbul. I can't think of many other cities in the world that physically straddle two continents - perhaps the cities on the banks of the two great Canals, Panama and Suez - there surely can't be any city in the world that metaphorically straddles two cultures like Istanbul.
At first glance, it's as European as Amsterdam, Paris or Berlin. Impeccably well-dressed men stroll hand in hand with their scantily-clad girlfriends down wide, tree-lined boulevards, stopping to sip lattes in roadside cafes. Shoppers throng the streets, clutching bags from Benetton, Nike, or Body Shop and stopping to refuel at KFC, McDonalds, or the ubiquitous Starbucks. Distant skyscrapers loom over the financial district, as important-looking suits hurry from meeting to meeting in their chauffeur-driven BMWs and Mercedes. Yet the shining glass and steel towers do not quite have the skyline to themselves. Hundreds of identical minarets and domes, the telltale characteristics of innumerable mosques, leap skyward out of Istanbul's lowrise suburbs, and, five times a day, intone their haunting invocation to prayer.
In truth, I expected a little more of "the Orient" and a little less of the European. The Grand Bazaar, loftily described by Lonely Planet as "mindblowing", "labyrinthine" and "medieval" seemed more Bluewater than Byzantium to me. Endless glass-fronted shops selling international designer goods strike an incongruous note among the seemingly anachronistic carpet sellers and hookah-vendors; even the usual slick sales pitch appears to have been toned down here - I didn't once hear the immortal "good price for you my friend!". Perhaps last year's days spent wandering the great Khan-al-Khalili Souq in Cairo have inured me to the charms of other, lesser Oriental markets, or perhaps I'm being pedantic or idealistic in finding the presence of Armani and Calvin Klein a little more boutique than bazaar, but I was slightly disappointed.
Yet Istanbul's other main sights have not disappointed, despite the indescribably large crowds of fellow tourists I meet everywhere. The Topkapi Palace contains opulent riches to match anything in the world, my own personal favourites being the gold and jewel-encased arm and skull of (allegedly) John The Baptist, and an eighty-six (I repeat, eighty-six) carat diamond found in a rubbish heap in the 16th Century, before being sold for the princely sum of three spoons. I wonder what David Dickenson would make of that. The Blue Mosque is like a fairytale of the Orient, what every mosque should look like, while the Aya Sofia, to my mind not as aesthetically appealing as its azure neighbour, more than makes up for any worn around the edges feel with its long and incredible history. From 527AD until the Ottoman Conquest of what was then Constantinople, the Aya Sofia was undisputedly the finest Church in Christendom. The Sultans, not wishing to let religion get in the way of architectural splendour, promptly covered the Christian images, tacked on a couple of minarets, and converted it to a Mosque. When Turkey underwent its most recent religious conversion, from Islam to secularism, under Ataturk in the 1930s, the edifice was declared a museum. Today the features of the two religions are intertwined in the decoration of the building: crescents and Arabic inscriptions sitting side-by-side with crosses and craven images of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
If the Aya Sofia is a fitting summary of Istanbul's religious schizophrenia, events outside the building on the day of my visit neatly emphasise the contrast between modernity and antiquity. A cobalt blue BMW M3 is being towed away for parking illegally, in an area designated solely for horse drawn carts. The screech of the alarm drowns out the muezzins' haunting cries from the minarets. No-one seems to notice.
